The math ain't mathing
Real talk: when you’re building a policy platform, you’d expect the numbers to be, you know, accurate. But the Conservative Party’s big-brain plan to scrap the UK’s 2050 net zero target just hit a massive L.
In their 100-page policy document titled The Right Way, Kemi Badenoch’s team claimed that the path to net zero would cost the economy a whopping £957bn. They cited the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to back this up. Except, the CCC never said that. In fact, their actual data shows the cost is exactly half—£478bn.
How did this happen?
It’s giving major amateur hour. It looks like someone was working on a spreadsheet, copied the column of individual costs, and accidentally included the 'Total' row in the final sum. The result? A massive, artificial inflation of the cost of climate action that’s been circulating in right-wing thinktank circles for a minute.
The CCC has been trying to get through to Badenoch for a while, telling the Guardian that their offer to "meet with Ms Badenoch and talk her through our advice" is still on the table. Their current analysis suggests the actual cost is more like £110bn total—or roughly £4bn a year. That’s about 0.2% of GDP, a far cry from the nearly trillion-pound figure the Tories were throwing around.
Why it matters
Badenoch, an engineer by trade, wrote in the report’s foreword that "to fix a problem we must first have an accurate understanding of what is causing it." It’s pretty ironic that the party’s central argument for scrapping a major environmental target is based on a spreadsheet glitch that any junior intern would have caught. If the foundation of your policy is a math error, the vibes for your entire economic strategy are lowkey off.
